Jan Cox Talk 2529

Feelings

Editor's Note: 2529 and 2530 are a pair. If you listen to the first, be sure to listen to the second.

Summary by DC

Jan Cox Talk 2529 - May 24, 2000

00:05 As Zarathustra used to say to people: He'd go, "Hey, look here..."

00:14 I wrote down some stuff again that I was talking about Monday, and I'm not sure that there's any use in it..

00:24 I'm going to try to tell you. I was trying to warm you up Monday...I'm going to try to tell you, and then I can talk the rest of the time about how this would seem to apply in ways that people hadn't thought about it...this model could be seen as the absolute root...I found it useful.

01:11 It's almost the opposite of what I normally talk about...

03:33 I started out, as everyone did, having to adopt someone else's ideas; you have to, to get you going.

05:12 From one quite valid view...thoughts cannot be said to exist as things, as somethings...not in the same sense that a man's feelings can, his passions. It is the feelings by which we survive....thoughts are an adjunct...

06:03 Every thought you have is simply an outgrowth of some feeling. The feeling may be long forgotten in the sensual sense...

06:54 But rather than looking at thoughts as any sort of problem...they in fact are nothing...they represent something, but they are no more than a gauge..

07:21 The grand deed that thoughts can do, and that they're always prepared to do...is being able to take the physical world, and then in consciousness being able to manipulate symbols....that is, the problem solving that is survival enhancing.

08:39 [But] most of the time...you're daydreaming. It is the mechanical running of thought. And it is that...which I say is the manifestation...of being asleep.

09:21 But to look at the daydreams...as garbage is mistaken.

09:30 I remind you again from this model...all thoughts, no matter how useless they may appear at the moment, originally came about from some feeling.

11:26 Rather than studying thought...there is a way in which to ignore the mind.

15:47 Whatever this was that I was after, I knew that my ordinary state of mind would not do.

19:26 There is another way...

20:05 Amongst all the descriptions and all the claims that for a man to be awake he must get to the bottom of the mind...and all the methods...all of those are an attempt...to stabilize the mind...

23:15 All thoughts are like a gauge that is measuring, because feelings are already monitoring...

27:37 Can you see [daydreams] as refreshing courses?

28:27 I say there's a reason for daydreaming, for rehashing conversations...thought is like filed-away memory of past reactions...so the next time the situation arises, rather than just reacting spontaneously through feeling...your instinctive response may not be the correct one, may not be beneficial...

32:10 One of the purposes (indirectly) of daydreaming is the mind remembers lessons learned that were not natural to feeling, to instinctive passion. So when it comes back around, feelings have an immediate aid. It has instant access to memory that feelings would not have had.

37:53 Rather than struggling with the mind, continuing to watch the mind, I say that there's a way to do just the opposite.

40:18 Here's the way that I would describe it to you: you make yourself....not aware of the mind...you make yourself aware of feeling.

41:58 If being asleep is to be mentally out of control, to have the mind out of your control, to have consciousness out of your control, to have consciousness being driven by something beyond your ability to effect, then is not the cure...if you could never be conscious of consciousness...?

42:49 Instead of me surpressing...instead of me trying to control thought...to blank my mind out and bring on something resembling those extraordinary states of being awake...

44:27 It finally struck me: "Alright, what if I never thought about thinking?"

45:09 Here's the problem. How do you not think about thinking?

47:14 I understand why they used to say "Go meditate."

47:35 You need to meditate on the run, and it only takes a second and the purpose is to shift your attention from thinking to feeling.

48:38 You can't decide not to think about thinking....there's one thing that works with me.

49:28 All of these descriptions...it's like me trying to handle some piece of fine filigree, and I'm wearing catcher's mitts on both hands.

49:37 You just decide...I'm not going to think about the mind, I'm not going to be conscious of what's going on in my mind because of the fact that all it is, is the reflection of feeling....You do not have one single thought that did not come from a feeling.

50:45 Why study shadows?

51:20 I am going to be aware of feelings.

52:05 I'll put it to you simply....I can stop all forms of sleep in the head by simply reminding myself...that the only thing I'm interested in is watching my feelings. I am no longer going to waste my time looking at shadows. I know what they are; they're real; they're reflections of feelings, but to try to do something with them is foolish.

52:58 To begin with, you have to struggle with the mind. Where else are you going to start? Unless you're really childish and struggle with the body...

53:45 If you'll abandon [trying to control the mind] and just watch feeling, it will stop the struggle.

55:00 Rather than fighting to awaken, it's like you can just bypass it. You can bypass the manifestations of distraction.

56:01 It's [thinking] feelings staying in shape, feelings pumping iron. It's feelings constantly riffling back through their memories of past, emotionally-charged situations, and refreshing themselves by replaying them over and over and over and over.

56:30 Make this your aim: I'm going to become aware of feelings. That's where I'm going to turn my...awareness. I'm going to be aware of feelings. That's it. If you do that the annoyance of that other thing...stops instantly.

58:00 It's the most efficient thing I have ever found.

59:14 It made me irritated that my mind, consciousness, my own individuality, the very thing that makes me me, is out of my control, being run by Life. It's just babbling, it's repetitive, it's mundane, it's irritating and it makes me feel stupid...

01:00:12 This stops all of it, with no effort.

01:00:48 Under ordinary conditions...the only thing thought's doing is thumbing back through memory of feelings, the abstract it's made of lessons that feelings learned, and it's up to the mind to have filed them away and have them available. That's all being asleep is, is not having a challenge....that's all it is, is memory, feeling's sitting there with nothing to do, like firemen between calls doing curls with a dumbbell...

01:02:36 You know what's at the "bottom of the mind"? Feelings.

01:05:49 [Thought cannot be spontaneous, only feelings can] Being asleep is to be non-spontaneous.

01:06:36 Thoughts are measurements of past feelings.

01:07:43 There's a difference between being a bundle of emotions and knowing better, and just being a bundle of emotions.

01:12:06 If you'll only apply your attention there [to feelings]...it's the best one I know, the most efficient...

Jan Cox

Enlightenment is promised by many, but few dare work for it. You may have heard of zen, sufi, 4th way or The Work of Gurdjieff, but if what they promise is what you must have - then you are going to have to insist on it. Jan Cox recorded 3,300 talks, and we have archived them as well as all of his writings.

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